02-11-10 / THREE NEW AWARDS
Choose a Different Ending just scooped three more at Campaign magazine's Big Awards. Not sure what the exact awards are as yet.

29-10-10 / BACK FROM THE DEAD / JAM TODAY / CANNES PRESS
That's this blog that's back from the dead, not my still-perished hard disks, which I've been trying to ignore. Their demise knocked me so hard I decided not to write about anything until they were recovered and my lost Swimming video rose from the ashes pissing a torrent of fire. Alas, they still have an appointment to keep with data recovery professionals while I have been busying myself with...

... photographing newts in my kitchen and so forth. Oh, and the edit of my new short Jam Today, which became unexpectedly tricky to keep under fifteen minutes but I'm a gnat's nut away from picture-lock, so I'm taking some days away from it in a ridiculous attempt to maintain some perspective. That's me being responsible instead of buggering off to knock about with Swimming on their debut European tour, catching up with currywurst ohne zwiebeln in Berlin and Hamburg (and no doubt filming something that would only need editing).

There is a nice feature on Choose a Different Ending in The Cannes Report (which claims I'm the world's seventh highest ranking director of 2010!?!) and also an interview I did for Shots magazine after the winning streak.

08-09-10 / TRIPLE HARD DISK FAILURE GRINDS EVERYTHING TO A HALT
One evening after an ordinary shutdown, my computer somehow completely killed all three internal hard drives dead. They won't start at all and I have spent days disassembling and rebuilding and poking around internet forums. I have no explanation for such a massive stroke of bad luck. The computer just wouldn't boot one morning and it has wiped out the entire Swimming music video AND its back-up (including lots of compositing work), plus the two days of syncing I had just done for the new short Jam Today (which is a small loss in comparison to the music video). Needless to say, I am pretty upset about the whole thing and the world pretty much stinks for me right now.

While away on the shoot for Jam Today, which was also a killer shoot but I just don't have the heart to write about it, the knife crime campaign was completed and went online. It is not as I intended so I won't be reporting on that any longer. A big disappointment after the PAIN of shooting it. The cast were so brilliant that I'm writing a short for them specifically, to hopefully be done over a weekend for nobody but ourselves.

13-08-10 / A TON OF SHIZ
Loads happening. A bazzin' recce on the Norfolk Broads for Jam Today resulted in several potential locations. The usual quota of insanely beautiful skies and postcard sunsets worked wonders for the old head and I bagged quite a bit of footage towards long-gestating short Rotation into the bargain.

All of this amounted to the calm before the storm, in the shape of a follow-up to last year's anti-knife crime campaign (Choose a Different Ending). This new one was easily the most trying shoot of my entire fimmaking career so far. Even tougher than What about the Bodies. More on all this and Jam Today soon.

07-07-10 / NICE REVIEW OF 'SOFT'
I hadn't seen this before but just found a nice review of Soft on what looks to be a very interesting site devoted to short film.

01-07-10 / URGENT REQUEST TO ANY POTENTIAL INVESTORS
If you or anyone you know, be it an individual or a company, would be in a position to help top up our budget for my new short film Jam Today, please contact me via the email address at the foot of my home page.

28-06-10 / TWO MORE AWARDS IN CANNES
Unbelievably, Choose a Different Ending has scooped another gold and the inaugural Grand Prix for Good. I received the call on my birthday, no less :)

23-06-10 / AWARDS HAT TRICK IN CANNES
Just heard from the producer of Choose a Different Ending that we have won two Gold Lions and a Young Director Award for Best European Web Film in Cannes. Here is the producer Jonas Blanchard, Creative Directors Martin Loraine and Steve Jones, and Pete Chambers (wholly responsible for getting me into all this advertising lark) having far too good a time in my absence...

08-06-10 / NEW SHORT FILM / SWIMMING VIDEO FINISHED / HAMBURG
It's been ages! I'm extremely relieved to announce that my new short film Jam Today has been commissioned and is due to go into production in early September. It's all rather ambitious for the budget we have but it feels GREAT to be getting back down to it. In a nutshell, it is the story of an eleven year-old boy's sexual awakening while holidaying with his family on the Norfolk Broads.

The music video for Swimming has also been finished for a little while now. I have no idea what will happen with it until the single is released so I shall say nothing until the boys are ready. The short documentary we shot in snowy Northumberland last December will also accompany the release and I will upload both videos once I have the okay from the band. The peformance promo I shot for them a couple of years ago can be seen here.

Hamburg International Short Film Festival was the usual blast, although I was destroyed by hay fever once again. It was my ninth consecutive year there and I was due to present the Audience Award but I fell asleep in my apartment and so wasn't there when asked to take the stage. I watched more films than usual and recommendations are: Ruben Östlund's Incident by a Bank (Sweden), Anthony Vouardoux's Yuri Lennon's Landing on Alpha 46 (Germany), Ran-hee Lee's A Perm (South Korea), Nicolas Provost's Long Live the New Flesh (Belgium), Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia'a Rita (Italy), Jay Rosenblatt's The Darkness of Day (USA), Paul Negoescu's Derby (Romania), and Jan Speckenbach's Sparrows (Germany).

27-03-10 / DUTCH RETROSPECTIVE / TEACHER COMMERCIALS ALMOST FINISHED
GoShort International Short Film Festival in Nijmegen (Netherlands) screened a retrospective of my work last weekend. Smack in the middle of editing the new commercials, I made the journey to introduce the programme. I highly recommend this festival and urge all filmmakers to include it on their submissions calendar. Given that this was only their second year, the organisation was fantastic and from a purely technical perspective, the quality of theatre projection was up there with the best I've ever seen. In fact, the standard was so high that it reminded me of the need to remaster my films (not something I look forward to when lots of fiddly compositing will have to be started from scratch). The screenings even started on time, which took some getting used to. The staff were all great and after only three days there I felt surprisingly emotional saying goodbye, waving my thanks to them all as one and more or less scarpering. Films that stood out for me were Rúnar Rúnarsson's latest Anna (Denmark), Supriyo Sen's Wagah (Germany/India), Mechtild Gassner's Today is Yesterday and Tomorrow (Germany), Patrik Eklund's Seeds of the Fall (Sweden), and Jorien van Nes' Den Helder (Netherlands). All in all, after being so absorbed in the very different world of television commercials recently, the whole experience was just what the doctor ordered. An interview I did for the programme can be found here.

So, off the plane and straight back into the edit suite to finish the teacher recruitment commercials, which are now awaiting client feedback (this could potentially change everything yet, but for now I'm happy). There are four in all (two thirty-seconds and two ten-seconds), focusing on Maths and Science lessons. Over the years I have heard many anecdotes about working in the commercials industry (most of them bad) and it's interesting to find out what is true and what isn't, which becomes clear very quickly despite being new to the game. I'm grateful that my intended approach to keep the commercials totally documentary, using the teachers' actual pupils in their actual classrooms, was honoured. Trying to shape a coherent thirty seconds out of it all while leaving lots of good stuff out is another challenge altogether. It has been a long journey with obstacles and about-turns, but as a production company, Mad Cow have really had my back once again. The machine that is Jonas Blanchard (Producer) has been tirelessly legendary.

11-03-10 / AWARD FOR CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING
Choose a Different Ending won a Gold in public service advertising at last night's BTAA's (British Television Advertising Awards).

02-03-10 / AWARDS FOR CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING
Choose a Different Ending won two golds (best viral & best online advertising) and the 'best in show' award, the Platinum Honour, at the 2010 Creative Circle Awards.

19-02-10 / NEW COMMERCIAL JOB / MIKE FIGGIS
Tired. Preparation for a new commercial has had me travelling up and down the country to interview secondary school teachers. My already-healthy respect for good teaching has gone up a few more notches and my research has inevitably caused me to reflect on my own miserable school years, where 98% of staff seemed doomed to teach out of necessity rather than passion. Sitting at the back of classes as an adult is an odd experience and the absurd fear that the teacher is going to pick me out to answer a question is as prevalent as it ever was. The excessive rail travel required to reach all of the locations sometimes results in as little as one hour's work in a fourteen-hour day, and long taxi rides to remotely-located schools in between trains have involved funny conversations with rural cabbies. Within the space of an hour I had one proudly telling me all about his successful daughter who now works and lives in Manhattan, and on the following journey another proudly told all about his successful daughter who now works and lives in a chateau in central France. It would seem that successful, emigrated daughters are de rigueur in the taxi-driving fraternity. I cursed not having a camera when my train rattled through a Norfolk field of chomping pigs with birds perched on their indifferent heads. Alas...

All of this means that the Swimming video has been put on hold until we are all free to shoot the remaining segment.

Attending a seminar at Soho Theatre last week, I was happy to discover a kindred spirit in director Mike Figgis. I had been increasingly convinced that my lack of interest in watching films was at odds with my chosen profession. Is there something strange about liking FILM (the process of making them) far more than FILMS (watching them)? I do enjoy a good film as much as the next person but I am rarely satisfied and find most of them too long even if they are expertly constructed and performed (Un Prophet being the most recent example). I often attempt to remedy such disinterest by making myself watch more but the pile has become depressingly unmanageable and actually quite stressful. I could take this dichotomy to the extreme and watch nothing at all if it weren't for the nagging risk that whatever I am working on may have been done before, and better, so therefore the only way to be sure is by keeping an eye on what is going on. I abandoned television years ago but to abandon film too would all seem a bit Beethoven or something.

28-01-10 / AWARD FOR CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING / SWIMMING
Osocio, the world's leading social and non-profit advertising blog, have awarded Choose a Different Ending with their Campaign of 2009 award.

Having finished the short, snowy documentary for Swimming, I am now in the middle of shooting and cutting the promo for the single.  Both projects tie in so more on them in a later post.

24-12-09 / SINGING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND
Three days ago I was in Narnia with Nottingham band Swimming, for reasons they will shortly announce on their myspace. Okay so we were in Northumberland really, but the landscape was truly magical, consisting of nothing but snow-caked christmas trees as far as the eye could see. Given that we arrived in heavy snowfall we were fortunate not to end up marooned, drinking melted snow and eating tree bark. Or each other. A mile or two short of our destination, the conditions prevented the cars from driving uphill so we walked the remaining distance with all the kit and, ultimately, the day was a resounding success. Out in a brilliant location, in the best snow you ever dreamed of, with a determined, talented group of people - this is what it’s all about.

I will be directing the promo for their upcoming single in January. In the meantime, the last clip I did for them can be found here. Yep, Bubtowers is finally featuring video content after only three and a half years.

14-11-09 / RETROSPECTIVE / EIRE / AWARDS FOR CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING
There will finally be a retrospective of my films in my home town of Nottingham on Sunday 29th November at Broadway Cinema, as part of Bang Short Film Festival’s tenth anniversary Local Heroes slot. I have attempted to cram in as eclectic a selection as possible while keeping the running time down to ninety minutes. If you are local, or even if you aren’t, come along and throw tomatoes. Or money.

Just back from starry and flooded southern Ireland, a country fast becoming the most expensive in the world. Loitered around Cork Film Festival and caught a few films, the highlights being an Italian comedy feature called Pranzo di Ferragosto and a great Norwegian short called Twende, which unfortunately didn’t even get so much as a mention in the rather uninspired choice of awards. The low point was the unintentionally-funny new UK feature Harry Brown, for too many reasons to mention. Also managed to see The Road, which was so convincingly and relentlessly bleak that I felt a strong urge to drink myself to death after leaving the cinema.

My first commercial, the Choose a Different Ending campaign, has just won three awards: Best New Director at the BTA Craft Awards, plus Silver and Bronze at the London international Awards. Check out the clutch here.

22-10-09 / JAPAN
My third visit to Sapporo in Japan for the film festival, and another amazing trip. I’ve just written this paragraph several times before eventually deleting every highlight because it all sounds too much like boasting. Suffice to say: friends old and new (including the fella who played Jimmy Olsen in the original Superman films), cultural madness, mint food, and an unprecedented level of festival hospitality which goes waaay beyond the call of duty. Festival director Toshiya Kubo personally took us to see the Mt. Okaru ski jump when the festival was over, complete with nutters doing the jump in the pouring rain.  My body clock never managed to find any balance during the whole trip, but even this potentially-fatal handicap didn’t impede the barmy brilliance of it all.

There are many photographs but I have long given up on the effort it takes to compile a pop-up gallery. However, I had promised Toshi that I would shoot a documentary diary of the week and then promptly forgot to take any kind of video camera, so he proffered that I do it with stills. Depending on how ambitious the post-production of said clip becomes it will hopefully be much more entertaining than a stills gallery, although there is enough material and ideas to ensure it could remain unrealised for a fatal stretch of time if I let myself get stupid about it.

11-10-09 / GHENT FILM FESTIVAL / 10 TIGERS / TV LICENSING
There is nothing that relaxes and inspires me as much as chugging a boat around the enchanting Norfolk Broads, place of my conception and, dare I say, my spiritual home. Having returned from a long-overdue holiday there, where I completed further tests for the long-term night-photography project, I attended Ghent Film Festival in Belgium for a couple of days.

It was my third time at this particular festival and an impromptu drinking session in Nottingham the night before saw me arriving in a crabby enough condition to leave my passport on the plane, doh. The hospitality was first class, as always. It never gets any less surreal, especially when the hotel staff, who love it so much they have all remained since last year, remember you (and I won’t bang on about the enormity of the beds for fear of repeating last year’s entry, but they are BIG, okay). So, with enough food vouchers to eat like a king in a choice of amazing festival-sponsored restaurants (which all serve Westmalle beer!), it’s hard to escape the nudging sensation of being a lucky bugger. To think that I could have stayed the whole ten days in the lap of luxury, flicking peanuts at Kevin Costner or Andy Garcia. Another time.

Made the final tweaks to Tony Kelly’s short film 10 Tigers, which we started work on right after Andrew Brand’s Things We Leave Behind.  Tony’s last short film, which we cut in 2006, is available to watch on the excellent BBC Film Network here. 

Finally, nothing to do with work, but an outrageous example of Orwellian privacy-invasion that we should all be aware of. It takes a Jupiter-sized dose of willpower to summon the calm required for writing this without pissing fire from all orifices. A few years ago, I was finally granted exemption from paying a TV license fee when an understanding member of TV licensing, who also confessed to hating television, finally believed that I never watch the damn thing. However, given my trade, I have to own a set for watching films on DVD. Anyway, I just received a typically tiresome and dogmatic letter from TV licensing saying that Amazon.com have informed them that I recently purchased a television despite not posessing a valid license and blah-blah-yawn-blah. Naturally, the first thing I wanted to do was rip off Amazon’s nuts.com and introduce them to its bumcrack.com. Then I discovered that they aren’t the only retailers obliged to inform TV Licensing of such purchases. Honestly, this world. Some backhanders going on, one wonders? Said purchase was actually an HD monitor for editing purposes, but of course they cannot understand any of that, oh no, it’s a screen, you must be watching television. Dicks.

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